


pretty as a picture

by anorchidisnotaflower



Category: Fargo (TV)
Genre: 5 Times, Art, Collaboration, M/M, Season/Series 04
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-14 19:27:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29423781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anorchidisnotaflower/pseuds/anorchidisnotaflower
Summary: Hunching now over what should have been case notes, Odis finds an eye forming on the page. A strong line for a nose, the outline of a sharp mouth.A smile forms on his face as he works, half-conscious, tilting his head to get a better angle. The motions come quicker to him now, the page growing rough with half-finished marks, and he doesn’t realize who he’s drawing until Dick “Deafy” Wickware is staring up at him from the page.Five times Odis Weff drew Dick "Deafy" Wickware.
Relationships: Dick "Deafy" Wickware/Odis Weff
Comments: 12
Kudos: 11





	pretty as a picture

**Author's Note:**

> Many, many, many thanks to my friend who created such gorgeous art to go with this fic. Happy Valentine's Day, everyone!

1

Odis Weff is not an artist, nor a very good detective, but he styles himself as both. The art comes much easier than the detection— always has, in idle moments. It’s something to do that isn’t a ritual, something that keeps his hands busy and his mind free. Nothing could ever be a perfect solution, but if peaceful moments are all he’s allowed, then he’ll take them, grasp them between his hands as tight as he grips a pencil.

Sitting outside the detective’s office in the hall, he sketches another quick line on the notepad, letting the little pencil go where it wants. Odis used to doodle like this in school— hiding his notebook in his desk, he’d draw his classmates, mostly, or sometimes teachers. He’d always preferred drawing people. Despite their endless cruelties, their knack for crowding Odis at every turn, sketching felt like a step back. A way for him to appreciate the things people had to offer— eyes, noses, a turn of the head, a not-quite frown.

Hunching now over what should have been case notes, Odis finds an eye forming on the page. A strong line for a nose, the outline of a sharp mouth.

A smile forms on his face as he works, half-conscious, tilting his head to get a better angle. The motions come quicker to him now, the page growing rough with half-finished marks, and he doesn’t realize who he’s drawing until Dick “Deafy” Wickware is staring up at him from the page.

Odis blinks. His hand hovers above the page, pencil still gripped tight.

Deafy’s half-done smirk looks up at him, his hat a vague impression above his head.

It’s times like these that Odis wishes he had an eraser. He rips the page out instead, crumpling it tight in his fist and stuffing it in his pocket.

The notepad flips closed, and he walks off, trying to remember what case he was supposed to be working on.

* * *

2

“What do you got there?”

Odis glances up, his right hand twitching. Deafy’s leaning across the car seat, head tilted to look at the notepad in Odis’s lap. They're supposed to be on a stakeout — keeping an eye on the Cannons for any sign of Wickware’s damn convicts — but it’d been quiet the past few hours. Odis had been restless, so he’d flipped open his notepad with the guise of actually reading notes. Of course he’d started sketching instead, vague lines and half-drawn faces.

And now Deafy has the gall to notice. Odis tugs it away, but Deafy’s already seen it.

“Nothing,” Odis says, the word useless in his mouth.

Deafy’s smile appears in all its slanted glory. “Didn’t take you for an artist, Palomino.”

Odis shrugs. “I’m not. Just… something to do.”

Deafy snorts, a little puff of air. “From what I could see, it’s an impressive thing you’re doing.”

“Yeah, right.” Odis looks down at the page, the little figures and expressions. “I’m sure you have your hobbies, too.”

“Nothing quite so creative,” Deafy chuckles.

Odis looks over, almost smiling. “No offense, marshal, but I didn’t take you for an artistic guy.”

“None taken.” Deafy straightens up in his seat, pointing. “Though I do carve a pretty mean duck every now and then.”

Odis shakes his head and tries not to laugh. It isn’t fair that Deafy has a sense of humor. He’s an arrogant son of a bitch nine times out of ten, and Odis has to fight the urge to wipe that grin off Deafy’s face with his fists more often than not. But it’s times like these Odis wishes he was all cruel edges— not coupled with this sly, magnetic charm.

“Say,” Deafy starts, and that can’t be good, “what do you draw most times?”

“I mean, you saw,” Odis sighs. “People, mostly.”

“What kinds?”

“Is this going somewhere?” Odis shifts in his seat to look at Deafy. “Or are you just bugging me for the sake of it?”

Deafy shrugs. “Call me curious and strike me down for it if you have to. Can’t a man ask his partner about his hobbies?”

“Not your partner,” Odis mutters.

“As you’ve said.”

Odis fidgets in his seat for a moment, looking out the windshield. “It’s people I run into. Officers, for the most part, coworkers. Pedestrians on the street I manage to remember.”

Deafy tilts his head, and the streetlamp outside makes his eyes glitter just so. “You ever draw me?”

“No.” Odis answers quick, maybe too quick, but Deafy doesn’t react.

He smirks, though. “Can I make a request, then?”

Odis knows exactly what Deafy wants, and he’s not going to fall for it, not this time. “Anyone ever tell you it’s rude to ask?”

“Figured I was polite enough.” Deafy looks away, leaning his head back against the seat. “If you don’t want to, that’s just fine.”

Odis huffs, glancing out the side window. It’s started snowing, little flurries melting on the pavement, and his notepad lies heavy in his lap.

He taps on his thigh five times before he flips to a new page. It isn’t subtle, by any means, but it’s hard to be when he’s stuck in a car with the marshal less than a foot away.

Odis takes his time with this one, unlike the last. He looks over at Deafy’s profile in the window— the curved lines of his hat, low over his eyes, the sharp downward turn of his jaw — and follows it with the pencil, creating what’s almost a silhouette.

“Do I get to see?” Deafy asks. He’s remarkably still, and that’s when it hits Odis that he’s posing.

Odis shakes his head. “An artist has to keep some secrets, hm?”

Deafy chuckles, that low sound striking at something in Odis’s gut. “It ain’t fair to the model, though.”

“Who said you were a model?” Odis laughs, and it comes out short but Deafy’s eyes dart over anyway to spot it.

“I’m sitting here, pretty as a picture.” Deafy’s smirk catches the light, tugging parts of his face into odd shadows. “Ain’t that what a model does?”

Odis hums. “I don’t know about pretty.”

“Handsome, then.”

Odis looks over, and something in their teasing has taken an extra step somewhere along the line. There’s a road they’re headed down, one Odis knows too well but can’t imagine walking with Deafy, of all people, and so he frowns.

“Don’t know about that, either,” Odis says.

Deafy laughs anyway, and Odis takes the moment to look away, to tuck his notepad in his pocket where the crumpled drawing still sits, waiting for something he can’t name.

* * *

3

Odis is a stupid man for ever getting himself in this position, but lately, it’s been hard to think with his head.

He drags Deafy closer, yanking on that heavy coat to press against him, the brick wall cold at Odis’s back for every inch that Deafy is warm, too warm. It doesn’t surprise Odis that Deafy doesn’t know the first thing about kissing, but Odis is trying his damn best to teach on the fly, one hand still tangled in Deafy's coat while the other grabs the back of his neck.

It’s funny, really, even though it isn’t. Here’s Deafy — a U.S. Marshal with a bad habit of spouting off biblical bullshit and a penchant for acting like the smartest man in the room. A man who should, by all means, not be knocking his nose against Odis’s every time their mouths slot together. And yet.

Odis shoves Deafy back, eyeing his red, red lips. “This your first rodeo, cowboy?”

Deafy smirks, and damn it, Odis hates him. “I haven’t had many a chance to practice as of late.”

“That what this is?” Odis says, watching as Deafy moves back in again, quick as a snake in the grass. “Practi—”

Deafy shuts him up with another kiss. His hands travel south to Odis’s hips, and fuck, he _is_ a quick learner.

“Bastard,” Odis breathes against Deafy’s lips, and for that Deafy nips at him. It’s awful and it’s terrible and it’s downright sinful, and Odis curses him again just to get one more taste of that.

Deafy obliges.

It’s right when they’re really getting to the good part, Odis dragging his hand down Deafy’s chest to linger at his belt, that he hears footsteps at the alley’s entrance.

“Shit,” Odis mutters, but Deafy’s already dragging him back further down the alley, deeper into the shadows cast by the buildings. It’s like his hands are stuck to Odis’s hips, the way his fingers span across Odis’s sides and Odis wants him to stop touching him and never stop, ever, and that might be the worst thought he’s ever had.

Deafy’s eyes are fixed on the alley’s entrance, his head turned in profile. Odis just keeps still, latching onto the way the shadows meld into one another, the way Deafy himself seems to disappear into them.

The footsteps get a little closer, and they resolve into a butcher, tossing out scraps in a dumpster. The man’s only a few feet away— a few feet from both of them getting locked up, or likely worse.

Odis can only look at Deafy, though. The proximity of him, the way this angle changes his face, the way his eyebrows dart down as he squints at the butcher. The slight downturn of his mouth, the brief dart of his tongue as he licks his lips, just slightly, just enough that Odis knows he’s still thinking about their previous activities, even two seconds from being ruined.

The butcher whistles as he walks away, vanishing out the alley, and Odis wishes he’d stayed. Just to keep that look of almost fear on Deafy’s face.

And then Deafy looks Odis in the eyes, and right then and there, Odis wants to kiss him. Real proper, not the way they were grabbing at each other before. The soft sort, the kind to reassure, not ruin.

But Odis shoves Deafy’s hands off him instead, ignoring the way Deafy’s touch burns against his sides as it leaves. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Deafy nods. “If that’s what you want.”

Odis doesn’t _want_ anything. He wants—

He brushes past Deafy before the thought can manifest, one hand tapping at his side. He’s still breathing like he ran twenty blocks, and he tries to focus, to settle but he can’t, never could, and Deafy’s footsteps behind him are out of sync with his own and what if there’s a chance the butcher is just around the corner waiting—

Deafy’s hand is on his arm. Odis blinks.

“You need a ride home?” Deafy asks. There’s no insinuation there, not the one Odis expected.

“I’ll walk, thanks,” Odis still says.

Deafy shrugs, letting go. “Suit yourself. I’ll be seeing you tomorrow.”

Odis watches him walk away, only speaking up when Deafy’s gone. “Yeah.”

He goes home and doesn’t sleep. He sketches instead, in the bigger drawing pads he keeps hidden under the bed, and every page is full of Deafy in the alley, the way his face looked as he waited for their mutual ruin, and every time, every damn time, Odis can’t quite get it right.

* * *

4

Odis’s hands are bare. He opens his right hand, curls the fingers back toward his palm over the messy sheets. He does the same with his left, watching the thin light catch on each little wrinkle, each curve of skin.

Deafy’s asleep beside him, and even though Odis can’t think about it he does anyway. It had been a long night — one of the desperate sorts, where Odis knew he wouldn’t be sleeping even if he tried — and before he’d even registered where he was driving, he was at Deafy’s motel door. The damn place was at the edge of the city, some decrepit shack folks would only ever stay in if they truly had nowhere else. Of course it was where Deafy had decided to hole up. Of course.

Odis had knocked, five times, but it didn’t feel right so he kept at it, knocking, and Deafy had swung open the door the second Odis stopped, and they’d just stared at each other.

“It’s two in the morning, Palomino,” Deafy had said, some note in his voice Odis couldn’t read.

“Yeah,” Odis had replied, and then he’d shoved his way in with his mouth on Deafy’s and they hadn’t talked much after that.

And now Deafy’s asleep. Odis dares to look over at him, the bunched sheets a river between their bodies.

Something about the sight of him just—

Odis leans over the side of the bed, grabbing for his coat somewhere on the floor and pulling out the little notepad, the pencil tucked in with it.

He draws for what feels like hours. He traces Deafy’s body with his eyes, the pencil in his hands, filling in the shadows that drip across Deafy’s skin, the waves of blankets that cover him in parts, not wholes. There’s an urgency to this one that wasn’t there with the others— a need to finish this, to have this piece tucked away so only Odis can see it, only he can capture Deafy’s likeness as though it’s something to bottle.

But it isn’t Deafy, not really. The man sleeping next to Odis isn’t smiling like he could slice him open with a look. His hair isn’t slicked back, flattened by a broad hat. His eyes aren’t open and piercing right through Odis, right down to the awful parts of himself that he tries so desperately to hide.

This man takes deep, even breaths. His eyelids flutter like he’s dreaming. His arms lie prone, fingers stretched out like they still want to touch, to press.

Odis looks down at the page, startled to find the brightening light of day creeping across it from the window.

He flips the notepad closed, shuffling carefully out of the bed, eyes fixed on Deafy. He doesn’t move, doesn’t twitch, so Odis gathers his clothes from the floor and throws them on.

But something like a tug holds Odis back. The kind that turns his head to look, to watch the blankets rise and fall, to memorize the way each strand of Deafy’s hair falls across the pillow.

Odis opens his mouth to say something, but why would he say anything now?

And as he stands there, lips twitching around words he can’t find, Deafy opens his eyes.

“Leaving so soon?” Deafy says, his voice rough with sleep and low, so low.

Odis swallows. “I didn’t want to wake you.”

“You didn’t.” Deafy tilts his head back, stretching his neck, and looks up at Odis. “You sure you want to head out with your tie looking like that?”

Odis glances down, and sure enough, his tie is a hopeless knot. “I… I’ll fix it later.”

Deafy sits up and rolls his shoulders back. “C’mere.”

“Why?” Odis asks, sharp.

“Why do you think?” Deafy replies. “I’m not planning on arresting you if that’s what you’re afraid of.”

Odis frowns at Deafy’s smirk. “I could just as easy arrest you.”

“Would you?” Deafy’s eyes are fixed on Odis, and why hadn’t he just left?

Odis fidgets in place, one hand tapping on the notepad in his pocket. “That’s neither here nor there.”

“Hm.” Deafy holds out his hand. “Do you mind doing me a favor?”

Odis snorts. “I think we’re even on favors, marshal.”

Deafy’s smile turns jagged. “Back to calling me marshal, huh.”

“It’s what you are, isn’t it?” Odis looks down, trying to hide from Deafy’s eyes, but they keep finding him no matter what he does.

Deafy hums again. “Let’s call it me doing you a favor, then. No debts. How’s that?”

Odis watches Deafy’s hand, watches the careful stillness of it held aloft like a promise. It’s only two steps, maybe three, over to Deafy, and Odis takes each one like it’s his last.

Deafy raises his eyebrows. “I don’t bite.”

Odis just looks at him.

“I don’t,” Deafy chuckles. “Think you’d know that by now. C’mere.”

And Deafy pulls him closer, hand snagged on his coat, and Odis has to lean down so Deafy can reach his tie. His hands move slow as they fix the knot, almost languid, and Odis just needs him to hurry up and get on with it but he keeps watching Deafy’s fingers anyway, the way they slide on the fabric.

“There we go,” Deafy murmurs, straightening Odis’s tie. “Handsome as sin.”

Odis snorts. “Big compliment coming from you, Mormon.”

“Sure is.” Deafy grins up at him, one hand still on his tie, and Odis almost leans further down. Almost.

It’s right then that Deafy’s other hand finds its destination— Odis’s coat pocket. Before Odis can do a damn thing, Deafy’s holding his notepad aloft and just out of reach.

Odis makes a grab for it, snatching at Deafy’s wrist. “You righteous piece of _shit_ —”

Deafy laughs, too loud, and scrambles away across the bed and Odis follows, eyes fixed on the notepad and stumbling and that’s how they end up tangled. Odis sprawls on top of Deafy, and Deafy stares up at him with a smirk that says he planned this.

Odis’s hand closes around the notepad, around Deafy’s hand. “Let go.”

“Ask me nicely, won’t you?” Deafy says, each word lathered in sick sugar.

Odis tugs, once. “Let go.”

“You think I didn’t hear you the first time?” Deafy’s fingers tighten in Odis’s grip.

“Let,” Odis says, third time the charm as he rips the notepad away, “go.”

There’s a breath where Deafy doesn’t say a word, where Odis forgets who they are and why he was leaving and what the point of it all was, of everything, and have his eyes always shone like that?

Odis wants—

“You all right there, Palomino?” Deafy murmurs.

His voice is ice water to Odis’s system, startling him back and away. Odis stands up, stuffing the notepad in his pocket, and sniffs, looking everywhere but at the bed.

“Don’t follow me,” Odis says. He’s not entirely sure why he even says it.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Deafy nod. “Sure.”

Odis leaves, the door shutting too loud behind him, and the entire drive home, his notepad burns a hole in his pocket, and his thoughts ring out in a chorus: _I want, I want, I want, I want, I want him._

* * *

5

The graveyard is as good a place as any to draw.

Odis shivers, trying to pull his coat closer around his shoulders. The bench underneath him is still as stone-cold as it was an hour ago, and though the snow has half-melted, the spring bites worse than winter. His hands tremble even in gloves.

But he keeps sketching, the little pencil whittled down to almost nothing. Over and over, the same face, the same eyes, recreating half-remembered memories to forget the vivid ones. He hadn’t glanced up at the gravestone once, but it burns in his peripheral, the only fire out here for miles.

It had been a long year. More than a year, now, but Odis has stopped counting, or at least pretends he has. Every day takes him a little further from the bloodshed, the fear, the persistent ache in his chest. He doesn’t even have to lock his doors at night anymore, really, but he checks them anyway, five times, latching them tight.

Odis blinks, looking down at the paper. It’s completely covered, every inch gray with graphite. He flips to a new page, and it’s the last one— his last chance to get it right today.

He’d been coming here a lot the past few weeks. Trying to recall details, how he’d felt, a certain look or a smile that’d almost slipped his mind. Even if it was far too cold, Odis always showed up, wanting the clarify the weather brought. Needing it.

He tries to plan this time, pencil held right over the middle of the page. Imagines a face shape, eyes, a mouth saying—

“Palomino?”

Odis looks up and his heart plummets six feet under.

Deafy’s standing just a few feet away and he looks the same as he did over a year ago. Same uniform, same hat, same damn eyes. The smirk’s nowhere to be found, but Odis thinks, distantly, that it would kill him if he saw it now.

Odis’s hands are shaking. He opens his mouth to speak, and he forgets how.

“I’m sorry,” Deafy says, looking down. “Didn’t mean to intrude. Fella in town said you came up here every day, and I figured I’d stop by and look.”

“Yeah,” Odis manages. The first word he’s said to the man in over a year and he chooses that one.

Deafy doesn’t speak up again, still looking at the ground like it’ll move if he asks nicely, and Odis closes his eyes, the memories spooling out like a bad reel.

He’d shot Swanee first, Zelmare’s screams in his ears. Then he’d turned to Deafy and pointed the barrel right at his heart, and Odis, his finger on the trigger, couldn’t do it. Not with Deafy looking at him like that, like he’d seen a ghost.

Zelmare had knocked Odis to the ground, running past him, and Odis had waited to hear two shots. One for Zelmare, one for himself.

But there were just the echoes of shoes on the floor, getting further away, and Odis’s own breathing, and when he’d looked up, Deafy was looking down the hall where Zelmare had vanished.

Neither one of them had said a word by the time the police found them. Odis had managed to sit up by then, his back to the wall, and he’d chanted to himself, over and over, as the body was cleared away. Deafy had spoken to other officers, but whatever it was, Odis didn’t hear him. Didn’t make out a single phrase.

And then he’d gone. Back to Salt Lake City, or wherever, and Odis didn’t care, really, he didn’t, and he kept working, kept doing what he could to be better, and he’d almost gotten himself killed ten times more after that.

Odis opens his eyes. “I was a shitty partner.”

Deafy snorts. “You been thinking on that one a while?”

“I’m sorry,” Odis says, and it’s quieter. “I know that’s nothing to you now, but I can’t do any worse at this point.”

“You could try to shoot me again,” Deafy says, and Odis looks up to see he’s smiling, almost.

“Cannon—”

“Told you to kill me and the cons, yeah,” Deafy sighs. “I know. Not exactly news to me.”

Odis taps his pencil on the page, fast. “Then what are you here for?”

He waits to see Deafy walk away. To pull out his gun, maybe, and finish what he should have done a year past. Anything but Deafy shaking his head, looking at the gravestone across from Odis.

“Well,” Deafy says, “I asked myself that very same thing the whole drive here. And I don’t rightly know.”

Odis glances over at the gravestone. His hands flex over the notepad, drawing it to his chest for just a moment.

He flips it closed and holds it out without looking at Deafy. “Here.”

There’s no wind, so Odis can hear the shuffle of Deafy’s boots on the ground. “This a peace offering?”

“I—” Odis takes a breath. “I want you to look.”

It’s another moment before Deafy walks over, the notepad vanishing from Odis’s grip. He still doesn’t look as Deafy takes the empty space next to him, the one Odis always leaves for reasons he didn’t have until now.

As Deafy flips through, each page turn loud in the stillness, Odis follows along in his mind, every sketch still vivid in his memory. The day he’d gone to the park and drawn the woman by the fountain, the child at her side. The officer hunched over his desk across from Odis, the same one he saw every day. The marshal who’d left, the one Odis kept trying in vain to mark down, to capture in perfect clarity so that he’d never have to think about him again.

Deafy gets to the penultimate page, and Odis can feel his stare. “That your girl?”

Odis nods, studying her name engraved in stone for the millionth time: _Levney Hooten. 1916-1944. R.I.P._

He’d drawn her over and over today, trying to remember every detail like it was a race, like it hadn’t already been over seven years since.

“She used to be,” Odis says, quiet like he doesn’t want to be heard. “I was afraid no one would remember her.”

There’s a small sound, and Odis lets himself look over long enough to see Deafy tracing the page with his fingertips, just barely.

“Now there’s two of us who will,” Deafy says, like it’s a prayer, and the harsh spring around them thaws in an instant.

Deafy flips to the last page and huffs. “Not finished yet?”

“Not yet,” Odis echoes.

Deafy looks over, and when they catch eyes, Odis— Odis doesn’t just want. He _needs_.

Odis holds his hand out. “Here. You can watch.”

Deafy places the notepad in Odis’s palm, and Odis starts to draw, and when Deafy peers over his shoulder, Odis doesn’t mind one bit.

When it’s finished, Deafy smiles. Odis curses himself for not bringing more paper, if only to capture the genuine something in Deafy’s eyes.

Down on the paper, two men sit side by side on a bench, looking over at one another. They’re almost touching, but not quite, and it’s almost like they’re each asking a question, ones they already know the answers to.

It’s the first time Odis has drawn himself in years.


End file.
